Apple Computer has landed a major customer for its Power Mac G5, with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University confirming Tuesday that it will use 1,100 of the machines as part of a supercomputer cluster now under construction.

The university, better known as Virginia Tech, said it has been working with the Mac maker for months to set up the massive computer cluster. The dual 2GHz machines started coming off the manufacturing lines last month, the school said.

"Virginia Tech's idea was to develop a supercomputer of national prominence based upon a homegrown cluster," Hassan Aref, dean of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, said in a statement.